A Hidden Life (7 page)

‘I thought his books were supposed to be very good. That's what Constance told me.'

‘Oh, God, Ellie, she never read them! Mother likedma the idea of being married to a writer. She imagined Dad was going to be famous, but as soon as she saw that the odd good review was all it was – a few words in some of the stuffier papers and no money forthcoming – she gave up the idea of being a Muse and moving in literary circles.'

‘Shame. Constance would have run a very good salon, I think.'

Matt shook his head. ‘She wasn't really interested in the books. Not as books, if you know what I mean. She was never much of a reader, as you know.'

‘Well, neither are you, are you?'

Matt frowned. ‘No, I'm not. Not of novels, anyway. I never could see the point of things that were made up – untrue. I don't mind a good biography. Or history. I like that.'

‘Then you're just the person to go through your father's papers. Find out about the family history. But d'you think Louise will have the time to help you? Young children are so demanding.'

‘Possibly not. She couldn't do it unless …'

‘Unless what?'

‘Unless she and Poppy came home to live with me and Phyl for a while.'

‘Both of them? A baby in the house, at your age? You'd have to do the looking after, I promise you. Lou won't want to stop work, will she?'

Matt sighed. ‘It's not me, it's Phyl. She's got a bee in her bonnet. Lou's work is only reading scripts and writing reports about them. She could do that equally well here.' A vision of his daughter in London, sitting crouched over that too-small and rather rickety desk with his granddaughter in the little box room that was her nursery, made him sad and he shook his head to dispel the mood. ‘I don't know what I think any longer.'

‘Then don't. I've nearly finished my coffee. Let's get another and pretend we're young and foolish again.'

Was Ellie flirting with him? Matt went back to the counter, thinking about the implications of this, wondering how he ought to respond, and at the same time, imagining what Phyl would say if she knew. She'd always been jealous of Ellie and when he left the house this morning, he would have pooh-poohed the possibility of anything at all happening between himself and Ellie. But now … Pull yourself together, man, he told himself as he approached the table with the coffee. It's just the way Ellie is, and always has been. It doesn't mean a thing.

Cinnamon Hill Productions had its offices on two floors of a rather tall, thin house in one of the seedier streets behind Tottenham Court Road. Even so, Lou always started walking more quickly as she approached this rather unprepossessing place. She loved going to the office. She only did so when she had a script to discuss with Harry Lang, and wished she could go there every day to escape her four walls and sit in someone else's space. Going to the office meant more to her than to most other people, she realized. It was a sign of many things. It showed, for instance, that she was a grown-up. This was something she had trouble believing and, okay, part of it was her age. She was only twenty-three, for God's sake, which seemed to her not a bit grown-up and certainly far too young to be a mother.

She'd had fifteen months to get used to Poppy, but even now she felt a sickening plunge of pure fear when she reflected that she was in sole charge of a young child. From the moment her daughter was born, she'd been on a dizzying seesaw that moved between terror and elation. That had got a bit better, after the first few weeks. Nowadays, she knew how to bath, dress, feed and comfort her baby, but still, Poppy was often an enigma and Lou was constantly aware that she could spring surprises; that occasions could arise when she, Lou, would be at a complete loss and need to ask for help; when all the experts with their users' manuals for mothers were worse than useless and she was left feeling hysterical and more often than not in tears.

I'm always so relieved when I drop her off at nursery on the three days she goes there – that must mean something, she told herself. It must mean I'm glad to be without her. How unnatural is that? She'd discussed this rush of pleasure with Margie, who pronounced it perfectly normal and assured her that everything would get a whole lot easier and better when Poppy could talk. Lou hoped she was right.

Working at Cinnamon Hill Productions also gave her a link, however tenuous, to the film industry. She was a part of it, even if only a tiny one. Films were Lou's passion. It was difficult for her to go to the movies very often these days. The price of tickets and a babysitter was simply too much for her, but she hadn't been able to say no to her father's present of a DVD player and she would have gone without food in order to pay for her Amazon rentals.

The office was up a couple of flights of stairs that badly needed sweeping. The first thing you saw when you came in was a small, shared open-plan space where a couple of people worked at computers, sometimes getting up to use the photocopier. From time to time a phone would ring. Three small offices opened off this one. The Cinnamon Hill producers worked in a couple of these and the third belonged to the script development officer, which was Harry's job description and sounded very grand. Upstairs, in what must once have been the attic, was the conference room, which sounded more impressive than it was. That was where meetings were held on the rare occasions when they involved more than three people. Lou had discovered that Harry was only five years older than she was and he
was one of those people who looked even younger than his real age. It was quite surprising that high-powered producers took any notice of him at all, but he was, from the little Lou had gathered from chat in the office, very well respected. She knocked at Harry's door and opened it a crack.

‘Harry? Can I come in?'

‘Hello, Lou! How's things? What have you got for me?'

‘It's this
When the Deathbeast Awakens
thing.'

‘Not one for us, you reckon?'

‘Don't think it's one for anyone. Here's my report.'

‘You look a bit – I don't know – a bit rough. Something wrong? Your baby okay?'

‘She's fine. My grandmother died. I was at the funeral a couple of days ago …'

‘God, I'm sorry, Lou. Really. Were you close? Are you up to this?
Deathbeasts
and so on?'

‘I didn't love her. She was a bitch … she …' To her horror, Lou felt her lip trembling before she burst into tears. God, how could she be speaking like this of Constance, and to someone whom she hardly knew. Mortification at the very idea of breaking down at work made the tears come faster as she dug in the bottom of her bag for tissues. Harry jumped up and took a handkerchief out of his pocket. It was shiny white; the kind of white you saw only in ads. It was also ironed. Who had ironed hankies in their pocket? Didn't men do tissues?

‘Take this, Lou. I'm so sorry. You shouldn't be here, really. D'you want to go home? I can call you a cab.'

‘No!' That came out too loud and desperate. Lou took a few deep breaths and blew her nose. ‘I'm okay. Truly. I don't know what … and your hankie. Thanks so much. I'll wash it and give it back next time.'

‘Bugger hankies,' Harry said, and opened the door. He spoke to Jeanette in the outer office. She doubled as a receptionist and did most of the photocopying and other menial work that cropped up around the office. Gofer should have been her job description, Lou thought. He was going to order coffee. Jeanette was chief coffee fetcher.

‘Can you get us a couple of lattes, Jeanette?'

Jeanette smiled at Harry and stood up at once. He added, ‘And
pastries or croissants or something. Chelsea buns. Muffins. I don't care, but sweet and filling, okay? Ta.'

Harry shut the door and went to sit behind his desk again. Lou looked at him and thought, as she'd often thought before, that he looked very much like a small boy stretched out into a tall, slim adult. He had light brown hair that flopped over his forehead; his glasses, square and tortoiseshell-rimmed, made his brown eyes look larger than they really were. He favoured denim and T-shirts or checked shirts and wore Timberland shoes. He seemed to spend most of his time seeing writers, chivvying and encouraging them, or talking to producers, and consulting with Lou about anything she thought might be worth developing. Mostly, Lou and Harry between them gave scripts the thumbs-down. Then poor Jeanette or one of the others had to feed them through the shredder. Now that so much was online, the days of addressing jiffy bags were almost over.

There was a tremendous amount of rubbish out there, Lou knew, and most of it seemed to be given to her to read and comment on. It was partly the knowledge that (given half a chance) she could produce something so much better than what she was reading for Harry that kept her own scriptwriting dreams alive. Ever since she'd realized that movies were written down first, like plays, she'd wanted to be the person who did work like that. She filled exercise book after exercise book all the way through her childhood, making up what she called film-words.

‘I'm sorry, Harry. I didn't sleep well last night. You quite often don't, with a little kid in the house. And I've got to go down to my parents tomorrow. They're having a family gathering to discuss my grandmother's will.' Lou pushed the hankie into her handbag.

‘Was she wealthy?'

Lou hesitated. Should she say anything? Wasn't stuff like this private? She hardly knew Harry, even though he was the one who'd hired her. They'd had long chats about work and got on well. He often made her laugh and had always been kind to her, but they'd never talked about anything personal. She didn't even know if he had a girlfriend. She'd never seen any sign of one, but why should she have?

‘Yes, she was,' Lou began and before she could stop herself, she found the whole story pouring out of her, as though Harry had unplugged something. She could feel, as the words came out of her mouth in a rush, relief at being able to speak about everything: stuff she couldn't tell members of her family because they were too close. Thoughts she hadn't articulated properly before. And Harry was listening carefully. He wasn't letting it wash over him, he was paying attention. The brown gaze fell on her and remained fixed on her and she went on telling him more and more. Confessing her fears and her anger and the resentment and anguish that made her do things like burst into tears in the office, which was not grown-up behaviour by any stretch of the imagination.

Lou only stopped talking when Jeanette knocked and brought in the coffees. She was grateful for the thought, but the first mouthful she took of the Chelsea bun tasted like sweet cardboard in her mouth.

‘So now what happens?' Harry seemed to be enjoying his bun.

‘Well …' Lou was coming to the end of the story. ‘We'll all have to discuss it over a meal, I expect. My father will be a kind of chairman. My siblings will bicker. Nothing will get decided. In the end, Constance's will is perfectly valid and we've just got to live with it.'

‘Bloody hell, Lou, that's tough. Wouldn't your sister and brother help you out? Or your dad?'

‘He will. He'll try and give me his share and I'm not going to take it. He'll say, it's going to be mine and Poppy's when he dies and why shouldn't I have it now.'

‘Why shouldn't you? If he and your mum are okay and you need the dosh?'

Lou shook her head. ‘They do enough. Poppy's nursery – I couldn't afford that – and decorating, and everything in the flat. My TV. The washing machine. I rely on them.'

‘Don't forget the royal fees we pay you.' Harry smiled.

‘How could I possibly!'

‘Your grandad's books. What are they like?'

‘Old-fashioned. They look as if they might be good in a stodgy kind of way. He used to read bits of one of them out to me when I was about ten or so. Must read them all again. When I can stop being useless and crying at inconvenient moments.'

‘You're allowed. Please feel free to come and borrow my hankie any time you like. Really.'

‘Shouldn't we do
Deathbeasts
now?'

‘I've got to go. It can wait. It's not urgent.'

‘God, I've held you up. I'm sorry, Harry. It won't happen again.'

‘No worries. You coming too?'

He held the door open for her and followed her down the dirty staircase. Out on the street, the sun had come out and a brisk wind was whipping up litter that whirled around their ankles. Harry suddenly leaned forward and taking the two ends of her scarf in his hands, tied them tenderly into a knot around her neck and tucked the ends into her coat. Then he touched her briefly on the cheek.

‘Take care, Lou,' he said, and waved at her as he walked away. Lou stood looking after him, feeling overwhelmed suddenly by how nice he was: how gentle and unscary. She liked the way he said her name.

Phyl was standing in the middle of her kitchen wondering what she ought to do first. Usually, the preparations for a full-scale family meal didn't faze her a bit. She loved entertaining and still clung to the belief that she was a good cook, even after overhearing a remark Nessa made to Gareth a few years ago:
Oh, Phyl's meals are fine, but they're hardly imaginative. Just Delia Smith, right?
Who says, she told herself now as she went through a kind of running-order in her head for all she had to do, you have to be imaginative? What was wrong with tasty and delicious? And the recipes worked. Every single one did exactly what Delia said it ought to do and reading her books had been a comfort to Phyl since the day she married.

She took the chicken pieces out of the fridge, ready to put into the marinade. Does anyone else besides me, she wondered, look at their life and wonder how it came to be the way it is? She fell in love with Matthew the first time she saw him. He'd brought one of his mother's cats in for an inoculation at the vet's surgery where she worked as the receptionist, caring for the animals she had to deal with and growing friendly with their owners. Matthew she'd adored from afar in a low-key, rather hopeless way, not expecting anything
to come of it. I knew him before Ellie did, she told herself. Then, one day, he'd asked her out to the cinema and she'd been so excited at the thought that she mixed up several appointments and nearly let Mrs Sanderson walk away with Mr Purdue's dog, who'd been in for a small operation and was dozing in his basket in the recovery area.